Human Reciprocity Among the Jewish Prisoners in the Nazi Concentration Camps

It has become increasingly evident that cooperation for survival among members of the same species is a basic law of life. Throughout the history of man, sharing relationships have been a central mode of coping with and adapting to the environment. When the conditions of life are particularly harsh, making survival difficult, there is often an increase in reciprocal relationships. This has been demonstrated for example in the socio-cultural patterns of villages in the Arctic. The Nazi concentration camp represents the most extreme situation for survival known to man. It was a central component in a system designed for killing many millions of human beings, primarily the Jews of Europe. These tormented people were all condemned to death, but the process took time and was not uniform, as it involved the killing of a scattered people in twenty-two different European states and regions. Even in the death camps, there was a technical limit to the numbers that could be killed every day. Meanwhile, as the processing for death went on inexorably, there was a delay in the death of those selected to work at various jobs in the death camp. Others were selected for a variety of slave labor under conditions that resulted in the death of many from injuries inflicted, exhaustion, exposure, disease and starvation. Furthermore, the motivation to continue with the struggle to live in the concentration camps was constantly and deliberately undermined by the ruthless system of unprecedented terrorization and dehumanization.